unday ask for no favor; they
demand justice. They do not propose to compel any Christian to enter a
museum, a library, or an art gallery; they simply claim the right to go
in themselves.

The denial of that right is a violation of liberty, which every free man
is bound to resent.

This country is said to be civilised. To a certain extent it is, but all
our civilisation has been won against Christianity and its brutal laws.
Our toiling masses, in factory, mine, shop, and counting-house, have one
day of leisure in the week. Rightly considered it is of infinite value.
It is a splendid breathing-time. We cast off the storm and stress of
life, fling aside the fierce passion of gain, and let the spirit of
humanity throb in our pulses and stream from our eyes. Our fellow man
is no longer a rival, but a brother. His gain is not our loss. We enrich
each other by the noble give-and-take of fellowship, and feel what it
really is to _live_. Yet our Christian legislature tries its utmost
to spoil the boon. It cannot prevent us from visiting each other, or
walking as far as our legs will carry us; but almost everything else is
tabooed. Go to church, it says. Millions answer, We are sick of going;
we have heard the same old story until it is unspeakably stale, and many
of the sermons have been so frequently repeated that we suspect they
were bought by the dozen. Then it says, Go to the public-house. But a
huge multitude answer, We don't want to go there either, except for a
minute to quench our thirst; we have no wish for spirituous any more
than spiritual intoxication; we desire some other alternative than
gospel or gin. Then our Christian legislature answers, You are
discontented fools. It crushes down their better aspirations, and
condemns them to a wearisome inactivity.

Go through London, the metropolis of the world, as we call it, on a
Sunday. How utterly dreary it is! The shutters are all up before the gay
shop-windows. You pace mile after mile of streets, with sombre houses
on either hand as though tenanted by the dead. You stand in front of the
British Museum, and it looks as if it had been closed since the date of
the mummies inside. You yearn to walk through its galleries, to gaze on
the relics of antiquity, to inspect the memorials of the dead, to feel
the subtle links that bind together the past and the present and make
one great family of countless generations of men. But you must wander
away disappointed and dejected